Emerging retroviruses and cancer

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases currently are a major challenge to the biological safety of human populations in the developed and developing worlds. A renewed interest in primate retroviruses as zoonotic pathogens was generated by the established transmission of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) from nonhuman primates to humans; Pan troglodytes and Cercocebus atys (HIV-1 and HIV-2, respectively) (Hahn, Shaw et al. 2000); human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1) from various simian hosts (Slattery, Franchini et al 1999); foamy viruses from a diverse number of Old-World and New-World primates (Jones-Engel et al 2007), and simian retrovirus (SRV) to people exposed occupationally to nonhuman primates (Murphy, Miller et al 2006). Gammaretroviruses have been isolated from nonhuman primates, but unlike several other genera of retroviruses, e.g., HIVs, HTLVs, SRVs and foamy viruses, zoonotic transmission of these gammaretroviruses has not, as of yet, been demonstrated to cause a human disease. Gibbon ape leukemia retrovirus (GALV) has been documented to cause neoplasias in gibbons. Recently, koalas on Australia's mainland were shown to be infected with a retrovirus, KoRV, which is highly related to GALV and is associated with a significant rise in neoplastic diseases (Hanger 1999). The surveillance of animals infected with pathogens that pose the threat of zoonoses is an important public health infrastructural priority (Kuiken, Leighton et al 2005). The recent linkage of a gammaretrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia-related gammaretrovirus (XMRV), to human prostate cancer underscores the importance of this goal (Dong, Kim et al 2007). © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.